He exhales, his shoulders dropping a fraction. “I understand that you know Will Stone. That you used to…work with him.”
Ripley makes a sound that can’t decide whether it’s a laugh, a scoff, or a sob. “You mean I used to sleep with him. Did you also hear the gossip that I ‘worked’ with him so I could steal his ideas?”
If she didn’t know better, she’d say he looks quietly furious. “I didn’t hear that, no. I’m sorry, Ripley.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not,” he says hotly. Ripley feels that same pleasurable, unwelcome flush of awareness she did withLet them.
“Whatever,” she says, determined to find safer ground. “But, yes, Will and I were in the same lab. We were also in a relationship. That could hurt your investigation as easily as help it.” She shrugs. “If you’re willing to take that risk, then I’m in—”
“Oh, that’s excellent—”
“With one condition.” She takes a fortifying breath. “I need money. My sponsor pulled out this morning. If I don’t find a replacement in the next two weeks, I’ll have to shut down my dig. For the next fourteen days, I have to get as many fossils out of the ground as I can. The only way I’ll have time to help you is if you find me a new benefactor.”
He draws back. “I don’t know that I’m the best choice for a fundraising role.”
“And I’m hardly a seasoned investigator. You want me for my connections to Will and Montana; I want you for your connections to do-gooders with big checkbooks. You get me enoughmoney to get my bones out of the ground by the end of August, and I’ll move heaven and earth to expose your fraud before…when’s the conference start?”
“September twelfth.”
“The twelfth, then.”
She names the lowest possible figure that will keep the dig going and secure Beauty a spot in the oversize Department of Homeland Security CT scanner at the Bozeman airport. She’ll take a salary cut to zero if she has to.
Smithson’s face communicates his gloomy estimation of the situation. “It won’t be easy to find money in the summer. How did you secure your first sponsor?”
What she did was grit her teeth and channel her mother for once in her life, but that’s not what he means. “I scoured the Christie’s catalog for months until I found an auction with decent fossils. Then I maxed out my credit card on a plane ticket to New York, a Brazilian blowout, and a black Balenciaga minidress at Saks Off Fifth. After the auction, I pitched myself to everyone who’d bid on fossils and didn’t get them.” At his shocked look, she adds, “I clean up well enough for New York, if you were wondering.”
He looks flustered, his throat working. “I wasn’t wondering,” he murmurs, shifting his feet, a strange note in his voice.
She shrugs. “In any case, it’s not a practical strategy at this point.”
“Agreed.” Smithson looks out the museum’s tall windows, one hand stroking his chin, his index finger dragging across his mouth. His eyes rove the rolling Montana landscape, seeming to follow the dirt track leading to the canyon.
“Perhaps a few names come to mind,” he says. “Are you approaching anyone else?” He raises his eyebrows, his politelyneutral expression reminding her of a movie character who’s about to pull a fast one in a negotiation.
“Yes,” she says, not falling for it. “I don’t have time to give you a window of exclusivity.”
“Well. In that case,” he says, his eyes narrowing with satisfaction, “I would have to see your dig, Ripley Adams.”
6
“What?No,” Ripley says, recoiling. “My site is private. You can fundraise from Berkeley.”
“I can hardly pitch you without knowing what you have,” Smithson says. He sounds coaxing. Wheedling.
Will used to coax her too. “What’s going on in that big brain of yours, Ripley?” he’d say with a flirty grin. He’d known everything about her ideas, her work, her habits, herlife.He’d collected an arsenal of receipts—entries from her lab notebook secretly copied into his; pages of dates and times they’d discussed her projects. He had steel jaws around her leg before she’d thought to wonder why she felt so trapped.
The idea of making the same mistakes again fills her veins with ice.
“You can’t go telling everyone what I have,” she says, working hard to control the wobble in her voice. “I’ll have drones flying overhead inside of a week.”
He turns his eyes up to the ceiling, frustration evident in the angle of his shoulders. “Honestly, Ripley. I have to convince someone to give you a sack of cash in the next fourteen days and I’m not allowed to tell them what it’s for?”
“Yes,” she says, feeling ridiculous. “Use some of your British words.Marvelous. Superb.Say them”—she waves at him—“the way you say them.” His voice would caress those words. He would ever so slightly pop thepinsuperbthe same way he does when he saysRipley.
“The better I know your work, the better I can use my words. As you Americans say.” He pauses thoughtfully, his gaze sweeping from her no doubt flaming-red cheeks to her badly tied shoes. Whatever he sees, it makes him soften.
